Gert's Grit

The book above, titled One Tough Mother: Success in Life, Business, and Apple Pies, tells the phenomenal story of Gertrude Boyle. Her challenges began as a young girl in Germany, when Hitler was gaining power and restricting Jews—which included her family—from going to regular stores or going swimming.

Despite owning a wholesale shirt factory, her father felt the need to take his family and move to Portland, Oregon, where his brother lived. Imagine 13-year-old Gertrude’s shock and excitement when her father returned from a trip to the United States and told the family that they were moving to a new country.

So they moved, and life was smooth for a time. Gertrude’s father started the Columbia Hat Co., named after the Columbia River. Gertrude graduated high school and went to the University of Arizona, where she met her husband Neal. After they married, Neal went to work for her father, eventually becoming the CEO of Columbia.

There came a point where Neal saw the need take on a $150,000 loan for the company. He argued that it was not a big deal—just going to the bank—but the danger was that he had put his $50,000 life insurance policy, his house, his beach house, and even his mother-in-law’s house down as collateral.

Three months after taking out the loan, Neal died at the age of 47.

What do you do? You’re a widow. A company has just fallen into your hands in the midst of a failing 1972 economy. Your home and your mother’s home are going to be lost. You have no personal experience the business world. Do you give up?

Well, Gert Boyle did the only thing she could do and took the reins the reign of the company, becoming CEO.

Read some of these excerpts from the book and you’ll get an idea of how tough Gert is:

"Around 1972, the bankers said, you've gotta sell it, Gert. So I found this gentleman--I'm using the term very loosely. He said, okay, I'll buy the company. But I don't want the building, I don't want the whole inventory. It didn't take me but a few minutes to figure out I was gonna make about $1,400, and I still had the debt. So I told the gentleman where to put it and where to take it."

"I had three union strikes, which also didn't help matters. I learned a few new words. As a matter of fact, a whole vocabulary. But I won. We, it's a nice word to say, terminated them. It's a reason we went overseas: We just couldn't afford to put up with the expense of fighting continually."

A major factor in the success of Columbia Sportswear was the “tough mother” advertising campaign that Gert implemented. The campaign struck a chord with a wide audience, shifting the focus of the sportswear company from hardcore winter enthusiasts to everyday consumers, including students, suburbanites, and babies. In one such advertisement, Gert forced her son, Tim, through a car wash to test a parka. Now that is some creative advertising, isn’t it?

"Before the tough-mother ads, I always thought our advertising was kind of weird, with the 'engineered' and all that. Because the average person doesn't care anything about having something engineered. People care about having it fit well. I'm the kind of person who always wants to try something new, so we tried something new. We had a German salesman, Mr. Wasserman was his name. 'No vone vould ever look at a voman telling you vhat to vear.' He got outvoted."

The small family business is now a $1.2 billion public company, and it’s clear that the Gert Boyle’s sheer grit was what took Columbia Sportswear to where it is now. And don’t feel bad for little Tim; he’s CEO of the company now.

This should be a lesson to us all that when tragedy hits, it is vital to continue pushing forward. It is through fierce struggles that great victories are gained.